"Her father felt that he was unworthy of there, he was not to be seen. I came up to her," said I.

"Ah, sir, that is exactly what astonishes | boa, with his conquering band, crossed the us all so much. Only think, on Sunday, in the midst of a tremendous storm, a gentleman came to the Valley; I could have declared he was an English milord; he wore a straw hat covered with ribbons." "Well, but what has all this to do with Isthmus at Darien on the Atlantic side; but Gervais ?"

Oh, Gervais! Gervais, my son! my lit- east coast; and as the route pursued was tle Gervais !" sobbed the poor woman.

"If you were to set Puck at liberty, per- not be unacceptable. haps he might find Gervais," said I.

The chain was unfastened, and before I had time to see that Puck was free, he darted off, and the next moment I heard the sound of a body falling into the depths of the Arveyron. "Puck! Puck!" shouted I; but when I reached the spot, the little dog had disappeared, and all that could be seen was a blue mantle floating on the surface of the waters.

Panama, an offshoot of the Pacific, you may | arches spanning the nave are laden with be supposed to have started from your a wilderness of shrubbery and wild vines, crowded, uncomfortable berth with the which fall like a fringe to the very floor. blessed news in your ears that you are now The building is roofless; but daylight can entering Panama Bay; and on reaching the scarcely steal on through the embowering deck the mists of morning are lifting off leaves. Several bells, of a sweet silvery the waters, and an island rises before you, ring, are propped up by beams in a dark with hills rising in terraces of luxuriant corner; but from the look of the place, ages vegetation to the height of a thousand feet. seem to have passed since they called the Palms, cocoa, and banana-trees stretch in crafty brotherhood to the oracion. A splenunbroken masses from its summit to the sea. did college, left incomplete many years ago, A village, with an unfailing spring of sweet fronts in one of the plazas. Its Corinthian water, from which all the vessels touching pillars and pilasters of red sandstone are at Panama are supplied, appears in a shel- broken and crumbling; and from the crevtered nook beside a cocoa grove. It is the ices at their base spring luxuriant bananas, island of Taboga, which is to Panama what shooting their large leaves through the winCapri is to Naples, only far more beautiful. dows, and folding them around the columns So deep is the water around it, that you of the gateway. So rapid, yet so beautiful pass within a stone's throw of the gardens is decay in the tropics! The private dwellof orange and tamarind fringing the beach. ings are lofty, with projecting eaves, someAll around you now spreads the bay, sur- times with verandas in front, and always rounded by green undulating hills, and its whitewashed. Many of them have patios, sparkling swells ridden by flocks of snow- or inner courts, as in Old Spain; the rooms white pelicans. To your right, in the dis- are of great height and spaciousness, the tance, are seen the decaying walls of a fort, walls very solid; and though the woodwork stretching for a full mile along the shore; is almost all rotten or torn away, a comparin front are some volcanic islets, steep and atively small outlay of money would put the matted with foliage, which, seen through a town in complete repair. Some Yankees golden mist, present a dreamy and pleasing have lately established a few hotels and eatfeature in the vista, while beyond the rays ing-houses; and when a fit road shall have of the morning sun fall in burnished tints on been made across the Isthmus, this neglected the solid stone-walls of the town. Enormous place will assume a charming appearance. canoes, paddled by half-clad negroes, approach the ship, and convey you over the shallows to the beach.

Passing through the once massive but now crumbling boundary-walls of Panama, you enter its narrow, shady streets, and emerge in the Plaza or great square. Here grass is growing over the pavement, and, lounging at the door of the guardhouse, you see some wretched-looking soldiers, without shoes or stockings. Men and things alike speak of degeneracy and decay. The cathedral is a wreck; not a third of the handsome stone churches are now in use; and even the private houses are not exempt from decay. Some of the decaying buildings are exceedingly picturesque, being partially covered with ivy and vines; whilst, rising far above the walls, are to be seen countless tropical plants and flowers. Most exquisite of these are the ruins of the Jes uit church of San Felipe, which reminds one of the Baths of Caracalla. The majestic

Few persons of pure Spanish descent are here to be seen-and the fewer the better, considering their notions and habits. The oppressed are now masters. Four-fifths of the population are of the negro race; smaller in their proportions, but infinitely less repulsive in appearance than those of the United States. They are the carriers of the place, and are by far the hardiest and most muscular race on the Isthmus. With their legs and feet bare, and nothing but a cloth around their loins, they carry enormous burdens, stepping along the toilsome and uneven roads with wonderful strength and dexterity. They all bear on their hard and wrinkled faces the stamp of overtaxed strength; but they seem content with their lot, and will doubtless regret the formation of a better route, as tending to lessen the value of their services. You hire one of them to carry your luggage, and a skeleton mule for yourself, and set out on your overland journey.

For a short time after leaving Panama, it here exchange your mule for a canoe, and

is pleasant enough travelling, the narrow road being paved with large regularly-cut stone, the remains of the old Spanish highway across the Isthmus; then comes abundance of sand; then the road again, but this time a Via Mala indeed. Numbers of stone-flags have sunk from their places, every cavity is filled with mud and water; and it needs incessant and fatiguing exertion to prevent your mule floundering into these pitfalls and quagmires. So execrable is the road, that all female passengers have to don male attire, and stick to their mules as they best can and the spectacle is by no means uncommon of lady-emigrants perambulating Panama for a day or two thus strangely attired, having outstripped their luggage. At the neck of the Isthmus, where you are crossing, the Cordillera is interrupted by some remarkable breaks or nearly level spaces. The road passes over the projecting spurs of the main chain, and through dense forests your spent mule reaches the highest ridge. Do not expect the view of a sea on either hand. Above you spreads a roof of transparent green, through which few rays of the sunlight fall-the only sounds, the chattering of monkeys as they crack the palm-nuts, and the scream of parrots flying from tree to tree. In the deepest ravines spent mules lie dying or dead; and perched on the boughs overhead, the bald vultures wait silently for you to pass. Clefts and gullies, swamps and thickets, seem to render the way impassable; but your mule is steady and sure-footed. He slides down almost precipitous banks, bringing up all straight at the bottom-though more than once you go over his head. No fear of him running away: he stands like a brick till you remount, and then resumes his deliberate pace.

A twenty miles' ride brings you, thorough ly tired, to the mud-plastered cane-houses of Cruces a miserable place. The houses are so irregularly scattered, that but a small portion of the town bears any resemblance to a street; and the whole population is under 900. You are glad next morning when you prepare to leave it; for the place is dirty, the climate unhealthy, and prices quite on the Californian scale-two dollars for a plate of meat, and two more for cooking it! The worst of the journey is now over, for you

the execrable road for the gliding bosom of the Rio Chagres. At first the current is rapid, and as your negro boatmen leisurely ply their broad paddles, they keep time to the Ethiopian melodies they have picked up from the emigrants. To keep up the excitement, the brandy bottle is handed round; and so, after much pulling, laughing, and singing, we arrive at Gorgona, at which the river Chagres assumes a respectable breadth.

The arrival at Gorgona is about dusk; yet there is sufficient light to see a number of empty canoes moored to the bank, by which you understand that a body of upstream emigrants have already landed, and that the ship which brought them awaits you at the mouth of the river. The sound of wooden drums proclaims a fandango. You are not tired, and proceed to the rendezvous. The aristocracy of the little place have met in the alcalde's house; the plebs on a level green before one of the huts. The dances within doors and without are the same, but there is some attempt at style by the former class. The ladies are dressed in white and pink, with flowers in their hair, and waltz with a slow grace to the music of violins and guitars. The alcalde's daughters are rather pretty, and great favorites with the Americans-some of whom join in the fandango, and go through its voluptuous mazes at the first trial, to the great delight of the natives. There is less sentiment but more jollity at the dances on the grass, though the music there is certainly deficient. The only accompaniment to the wooden drums is the "na, na, na," of the women-a nasal monotone, which few ears have nerve to endure. Those who dance longest, and with the most voluptuous spirit, have the hats of all the others piled upon them in token of applause. These half-barbarous orgies are seen in the pure and splendid light poured down upon the landscape from a vertical moon; and for long the dazzling beams and the laughing shouts of the dancers scare away sleep from your comfortless roostingplace.

Next morning you again embark, and after about an hour's sail your canoe rounds the foot of Monte Carabali, a bold peak, clothed with forests and surmounted with a single splendid palm, and whose summit is the only one in the province from which both seas

The

may be seen at once. The sun shines highly | wind comes over the forests, and the air is and hotly, and lying back under the palm- at once darkened. You hear the rush and leaf thatch that shades the canoe's stern, roar of the rain as it comes towards you you watch the shifting scenery through like the trampling of a myriad of feet on which you are swiftly gliding. Here and the leaves. Shooting under a broad sycathere a solitary crocodile is seen basking in more, your boatmen make fast to the boughs, the sun, while on either bank the foliage and the next instant the rain breaks over seems alive with parrots, macaws, and mon- you as if the sky had caved in. A dozen keys. Nothing in the world is comparable lines of white electric heat run down from to the forests of the Rio Chagres. the zenith, followed by crashes of thunder, river, broad and with a swift current of the which you feel throbbing in the very water sweetest water you ever drank, winds be beneath you. Wrapped in waterproof, you tween walls of foliage that rise from its wait in your cool green shelter till the storm very surface. All the gorgeous growths of blows past. eternal summer are so mingled in one impenetrable mass, that the eye is bewildered. Blossoms of crimson, purple, and yellow, of a form and magnitude unknown in the north, are mingled with the leaves; and flocks of paroquets and brilliant butterflies circle through the air, like blossoms blown away. Sometimes a spike of scarlet flowers is thrust forth like the tongue of a serpent, from the heart of some convolution of unfolding leaves; and often the gorgeous creepers and parasites drop trails and streamers of fragrance from boughs that shoot half way across the river. Every turn of the stream only discloses another and more magnificent vista of leaf, bough, and blossom. All outline of the landscape is lost under this deluge of vegetation. No trace of the soil is to be seen; lowland and highland are the same: a mountain is but a higher swell of the mass of verdure. As on the ocean, you have sense rather than a perception of beauty. The sharp clear outlines of our home scenery are here wanting. What shape the land would be if cleared, you cannot tell. You gaze upon the scene before you with a neversated delight, till your brain aches with the sensation; and you close your eyes, overwhelmed with the thought that all these wonders have been from the beginning-that year after year takes away no leaf or blossom that is not replaced, but the sublime mystery of growth and decay is renewed for ever.

Caoutchouc grows in the forests, and your boatmen wear dresses of waterproof without fold or seam, but allowing free play to the limbs and muscles. It is a bountiful provision of nature to grow that substance in the region where it is most needed. As you sit gazing over the stern, a sudden cold

After six or seven hours' sailing, you reach Chagres at the mouth of the river. The population here, about a thousand in all, consists almost wholly of negroe, the dirtiest and most indolent of their race. Of all filthy towns this is the filthiest. The houses or rather huts are built of cane; pigs and naked children run at large in the streets; and you cannot walk through any part of it without sinking up to the ankles in mud. Such is the impression the place gives one, that two persons, who had sold off their whole property in the States, with the intention of settling in California, had no sooner set eyes on Chagres than they determined on returning home-one of them declaring that nothing on earth would induce him to cross the Isthmus. The climate, moreover, is very deleterious; the sun is blazing down on the swampy shores; and you joyfully embark on board the vessel that awaits you in the shallow bay, round the high bluff on which the old castle stands, and then, Hurrah for home! wherever that may be.

Pathless and featureless as this forest route may seem, the United States' engineers have already surveyed it, and marked a line for a "plank" railway. But the great line of transit, the " pathway of the oceans," will be some two hundred and fifty miles farther north, where the San Juan river falls into the Caribbean sea. The proposed route lies up that river into the Lake of Nicaragua, then up a small stream into Lake Leon, from whence to the Pacific is a distance of only ten miles, which will be passed by railway. Or else, diverge from this route at half way up Lake Nicaragua, and strike across the level country (only sixteen miles) to the deep Gulf of Papagayo,